Overpopulation Fears and Talk of a One Child Policy Hurt the Environment

Confessing to be an environmentalist in certain company is akin to saying you support terrorism. I am an environmentalist, though I am ashamed of some tactics used by those who are my "peers". I admit to caring about myself and my children more than the trees and the bees. I care about the trees and the bees primarily because we need them to survive, not because I possess some higher morality. The biggest culprits in perpetuating the anti-environmentalist thoughts are environmentalists. They seem anti-human with their cries of overpopulation and pleas for adopting a one child policy.

Malthus and Other Overpopulation Theorists

The overpopulation scare began with Thomas Malthus circa 1800, and shifted to people like Paul Erlich. Erlich wrote "The Population Bomb" in 1968. His work on ecology and his oversimplified IPAT equation (impact= population x affluence x technology) are still being taught at universities. Rumblings of China's one child policy being a good idea are becoming more common.

Among other misguided predictions, Ehrlich pronounced in The Population Bomb that "By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth's population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people." As I type in 2010, the U.S. Census Bureau's has the world at 6,816,849,307people. Erlich also predicted food riots in the U.S. during the 1980's that would cause the President to dissolve Congress. Faulty Ehrlich predictions are as common as unfulfilled Washington promises.

People such as agriculturalist Lester Brown, who do bring good things to the sustainability table, continue to perpetuate this Chicken Little syndrome. This only causes division. It does nothing for the environment or any perceived overpopulation problems.

China reconsidering one child policy; evidence of overpopulation myth

Why would China end their one child policy? As stated in a recent MSNBC story, a University of California Irvine study found that "By the end of this century, China's population would be cut almost in half to 750 million." When people urbanize, they begin to have fewer children. China is worried about not having enough younger workers to support the elderly. The Chinese government got in the way of a natural cycle and it's backfiring.

Overpopulation predominant in poor areas

The UN's World Population Prospects 2008 Revision has the population passing 9 billion by 2050. It points out that "Most of those additional 2.3 billion people will enlarge the population of developing countries" In addition is states:

" the population of the more developed regions is expected to change minimally, passing from 1.23 billion to 1.28 billion, and would have declined to 1.15 billion were it not for the projected net migration from developing to developed countries."

The increase comes from areas where people use less than their share of our natural resources. If these developing countries become developed, trends should mirror the rest of the developed world. The solution to overpopulation is preventing poverty, not a one child policy.

Overpopulation and Fear

As a person concerned about the sustainability issues, I'm supposed to be ringing the overpopulation alarm bell. Am I the only one concerned about sustainability who read "the Boy Who Cried Wolf"? I know I'm not the only American fed up with fear being used as a tool for control. Environmentalists should be focusing on more tangible and humane issues than overpopulation. I, for one, don't want to live in a world where pro-creation or the age at which I die is regulated. The apparent errors of China's one child policy should end any thoughts of replicating it.

References:

http://www.census.gov/main/www/popclock.html
http://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp2008/pdf/WPP2008_Executive-Summary_Edited_6-Oct-2009.pdf